The Pink Umbrella by Frances Crane

Author:Frances Crane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BANTAM Books, LONDON
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Already the old-fashioned drawing room looked less drawing-roomish. There was a jolly sort of fire. A great jar of red tulips stood on the ebony piano. There were magazines on the coffee table and the paper knife in its Florentine sheath was lying carelessly on the mantel. There were ashes in the ashtrays. A little of such amiable carelessness changed the whole room—for the better, I thought.

Ellen was alone. She sat on the sofa with her back to the window knitting on a navy sweater for the Red Cross. She sat very straight with her elegant head bent only a little over a task she could look at or not, as she chose.

We sat down on the other sofa.

“You’ve been on my mind all morning,” Ellen said, in that wonderful voice. “I’ve been dying to call you, Pat, but I hadn’t the nerve, after what I got you into the other night. But I’m terribly worried over Sue.”

“Sue?” Patrick barked.

Ellen stopped knitting. “Didn’t Dick call you, Pat?”

“I did the calling. Dick answered. I asked to come, and Dick said to come on over.”

Ellen resumed her knitting. She was smiling.

“I thought Dick had called you and then told me that you did the calling because he knew I was reluctant to ask you to help us again. Dick does things like that. He is a very sweet person.”

“What about Sue?”

“She’s gone away. She left in the night. She left a note saying we were to let her alone, and that she wasn’t marrying Bill Reynolds or anybody else and would get in touch with us when she was ready. Said she wanted to think.”

“Sue has a job, you said. Phoned there?”

Ellen nodded her dark head.

“Dick called her office. She’s there.”

“Oh, I hope she and Bill haven’t quarreled?” I said.

Ellen said, “I’m afraid they have, and I’m sorry. I should like them to marry. I thought they would. Sue usually does what she likes and her father eventually gives in. This time he seems to have made an impression.”

“She worrying about the family taint?” Patrick asked.

Ellen dropped her knitting. “Who told you about that, Pat? Not that there’s anything in it. It’s absurd. Susan is as healthy as a cabbage.”

Patrick lit a cigarette and said, “If she thought Louis was fooling, why didn’t she go to Dr. Seward?”

Ellen’s eyes were inscrutable.

“She did. He was quite unnecessarily vague, in my opinion. He’s afraid he’ll make Louis mad. After all, Louis is his best patient, in this family, so he’s taking no chances. Louis makes fabulous doctor bills. When Sue saw Dr. Seward, he hemmed and hawed and told her she was too young to marry anyway and to wait, which is what Louis has told him to tell her, of course. I talked to her afterwards—but she’s so upset.” Ellen went on knitting. “She’ll be all right. Sue gets over things quickly. She has such good sense.”

“After all, a bad heart needn’t be hereditary,” Patrick commented. Ellen gave Patrick a puzzled look. “Digitalis is rather a dangerous drug, however.

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